Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

MARIENBAD-A HEALTH FACTORY

is marked by a granite obelisk, and on its side is
carved this famous poem, which is the master's idea
of Waldeinsamkeit:
Ueber alien Wipfeln ist Ruh,
In alien Wipfeln sparest du
Kaum einen Hauch:
Die Vogel in schweigen in Walde.
Warte nur-Balde
Ruhest du auch.
It is raining again now. However, it was doing
that before. I have been over to the establishment
and had a tub bath with two kinds of pine juice in
it. These fill the room with a pungent and most
pleasant perfume; they also turn the water to a
color of ink and cover it with a snowy suds, two or
three inches deep. The bath is cool-about 75~ or
80~ F., and there is a cooler shower bath after it.
While waiting in the reception room all by myself
two men came in and began to talk. Politics, literature, religion? No, their ailments. There is no other
subject here, apparently. Wherever two or three of
these people are gathered together, there you have
it, every time. The first that can get his mouth
open contributes his disease and the condition of it,
and the others follow with theirs. The two men
just referred to were acquaintances, and they followed
the custom. One of them was built like a gasometer
and is here to reduce his girth; the other was built
like a derrick and is here to fat up, as they express
it, at this resort. They were well satisfied with the
progress they were making. The gasometer had lost
a quarter of a ton in ten days, and showed the record
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